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Paleozoic Era · Carboniferous Period

Earth 350 Million Years Ago: The Early Carboniferous

Earth 350 million years ago: four-legged animals on land, the first forests spreading and Gondwana closing in on Laurussia to build Pangea.

Globe of Earth 350 million years ago as Gondwana approaches LaurussiaSpin it in 3D and move through time

Map: Ancient maps: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs (Scotese & Wright 2018), CC BY 4.0 · Natural Earth.

Early in the Carboniferous Period, after the Late Devonian mass extinctions, four-legged animals were living on land and in swamps. Warm, shallow seas laid down the thick limestones found today across Europe and North America.

Forests of tree-sized club mosses and early seed plants spread across the lowlands. Their buried remains would later become coal.

Gondwana was closing on Laurussia. Their collision over the next 50 million years raised the Central Pangean Mountains and assembled the supercontinent Pangea.

Events of the time

  • Gilboa fossil forest

    385 million years ago · New York, USA

    Stumps of some of the earliest known trees, about 8 m tall, which had fronds instead of leaves.

Part of the Paleozoic Era & The Cambrian Explosion.